Is Fast Food Really Cheaper?

Chef Kurt Michael Friese, who will be visiting us later this month, is out to debunk the popular notion that fast food is less expensive than food that you’d cook for yourself. To prove his point, he took the KFC $10 Challenge, in which the fast food chain challenges viewers to assemble a chicken dinner as inexpensively as they themselves can do it:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0tfHgW5mYs]

Armed only with a copy of The Joy of Cooking, Kurt headed to his local market and picked up the necessary ingredients. The result? His version of KFC’s chicken dinner cost not $10, not $9, but $7.94 — and he had three extra pieces of chicken left over and a carcass to use for stock as well.

4 responses to “Is Fast Food Really Cheaper?”

What a load of chicken manure! Not only can you make a fried chicken dinner that is cheaper than KFC – it will taste 10 times better as well. Life is too short to eat bad fried chicken. Or glue-like potatoes. Or wall paper paste gravy.

The bad news is that most people will swallow the ad whole without even thinking twice. Shame on ’em.

What a load of chicken manure! Not only can you make a fried chicken dinner that is cheaper than KFC – it will taste 10 times better as well. Life is too short to eat bad fried chicken. Or glue-like potatoes. Or wall paper paste gravy.

The bad news is that most people will swallow the ad whole without even thinking twice. Shame on ’em.

Reminds me of a time in the supermarket in the town I grew up in, back in California. I was there with a guy who’d spent years as a chef, and he got to talking with this woman who looked like she’d just come from the beauty salon — perfect hair, nails, makeup, everything. He made some offhand comment about how ridiculous the price of boneless, skinless chicken breasts were, and compared the per-pound price to that of a whole chicken. “Yes, but then you’d have to bone the whole chicken,” she said. “Sure,” he replied, “but who doesn’t know how to bone a chicken?”

Her eyes went wide and for a moment she stared at him. He, on the other hand, seemed not to have the faintest idea that he was talking to a person who wouldn’t have the first notion of what to do with a whole chicken and a knife… or even that such a person existed.

I’m not saying I’m anywhere near as good at boning chickens as he is. But there are a lot of people out there in the same boat she’s in. And to them, there are hugely money-saving steps like “start with a whole chicken” that never appear on the radar screen.

Reminds me of a time in the supermarket in the town I grew up in, back in California. I was there with a guy who’d spent years as a chef, and he got to talking with this woman who looked like she’d just come from the beauty salon — perfect hair, nails, makeup, everything. He made some offhand comment about how ridiculous the price of boneless, skinless chicken breasts were, and compared the per-pound price to that of a whole chicken. “Yes, but then you’d have to bone the whole chicken,” she said. “Sure,” he replied, “but who doesn’t know how to bone a chicken?”

Her eyes went wide and for a moment she stared at him. He, on the other hand, seemed not to have the faintest idea that he was talking to a person who wouldn’t have the first notion of what to do with a whole chicken and a knife… or even that such a person existed.

I’m not saying I’m anywhere near as good at boning chickens as he is. But there are a lot of people out there in the same boat she’s in. And to them, there are hugely money-saving steps like “start with a whole chicken” that never appear on the radar screen.